Numbers don't add up for top-rating Hot Hot Sex YouTube clip

Lovefoxxx, right, of Brazilian band CSS, pictured left. A video of their song, Music is My Hot Hot Sex, has just replaced Evolution of Dance (inset) as the most viewed video on YouTube.Photo: Getty Images

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YouTube is investigating a sudden surge in traffic that has seen
a fan-made video clip featuring a quirky Brazilian pop band rocket
to the top of its most viewed video chart.

The clip, Music is My Hot Hot Sex by the Brazilian
electro band Cansei De Ser Sexy, has collected over 40 million
additional views in just three weeks to push its cumulative tally
to an impressive 89 million.

In that period, it jumped from tenth place on YouTube's all-time
leaderboard to first, overtaking American motivational speaker
Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance which has held the top
spot unchallenged for over 18 months.

Cansei De Ser Sexy, or CSS for short, means "I got tired of
being sexy". The name refers to a comment attributed to singer
Beyonce Knowles around the time the band formed in 2003.

The video's come-from-nowhere success however has left many
YouTube fans asking questions about the unprecedented traffic
spike, with many suggesting that the books may have been
cooked.

An in-depth analysis of the YouTube statistics by blogger
Andy Baio also suggests inconsistencies in the traffic
surge.

Baio points out that an examination of hits compared with user
ratings shows that the Brazilian video has what he described as "a
very unusual 21,487-to-1 ratio" of views-to-ratings.

He calculated the average ratio for every other video in the top
10 to be 590:1, which is consistent with a ratio of 545:1 for the
top 500 YouTube videos.

In other words, far fewer viewers are leaving a recommendation
after watching Music is My Hot Hot Sex than is the case
across the board.

This may indicate the use of an automated, non-human method to
inflate the clicks.

A YouTube spokesman told smh.com.au the company was
investigating the traffic spike. YouTube is owned by Google, the
world's leading search engine.

"We don't condone efforts to affect the integrity of our video
rankings or view counts," he said. "We are looking into this matter
and will take appropriate action when we resolve the
investigation."

There are two other plausible explanations for the surge: Apple
and Barack Obama.

The Hot Hot Sex video was actually made by an Italian
music blogger and photographer called Clarus Bartel.

Last year, CSS had invited Italian fans to use raw footage of
the band to create their own videos, using another of their song
titled Alcohol.

Bartel, however, chose to remix the video with Music is My
Hot Hot Sex and he uploaded his mashup on to YouTube last
April.

In September, a British student a the University of Leeds,
18-year-old Nick Haley, discovered the song and turned it into a
homemade advertisement for Apple's new iPod touch media player -
which he then also uploaded to YouTube.

Haley, who had his first Apple computer when he was just three,
told The New York Times he was inspired to create the
advertisement after he heard the lyric in the song "My music is
where I'd like you to touch".

An Apple employee stumbled across Haley's video and referred it
to the company's ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, suggesting they contact
the creator with a view to turning it into a real
advertisement.

Haley was invited to help work on a broadcast-quality version of
the advertisement and the finished product was premiered on
primetime television in the US last October.

Among the keywords Bartel has tagged his video with are "iPod",
"touch", "hot", "sex", "apple", "Barack" and "Obama" - all very hot
search terms in an age where discovery and success can be
predicated on how highly you rate on a Google search.